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Thursday, February 23, 2017

Withdrawing Federal Protections for Trans People Will Be Deadly

[TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE, TRANSPHOBIA]

If it hasn't been already.

Trans people are extremely vulnerable to mental illness and suicide due to the terrible way our society treats them. Offering a suicidal person some hope and then yanking it away is a pretty much guaranteed to make them more suicidal. If zero trans people had yet killed themselves over this, I'd be shocked. But I'll never know, because there are so many homeless, closeted, and otherwise overlooked trans people in this nation alone who would remain unnoticed even if they ended their own lives.

I don't know what else to say about this. I heard about it days ago and I could have blogged about it, but what do I say? There won't be the same response from people that there was over the Muslim ban because trans people are so marginalized in this country that many people still barely even recognize their existence. And plenty of others that adamantly deny it.

I really wish I had more pull. I'm going to keep working hard to reach as many people as possible with this message, and I beg all of my readers to do the same. Protect trans people. Protect trans kids. The fact that they don't have the right to use public restrooms safely is an attack on their civil rights, their humanity, and their existence. It makes it hard for them to have anything close to a normal life. It affects their education and their ability to work.

But the best thing you can do is talk to your friends and family about the existence of trans people and why they have a right to exist in public spaces. A ton of people are still ignorant about even the most basic trans issues. It's up to us cis people to educate other cis people. The faster we do this, the fewer trans people have to die for no reason. Get on it.